Chess Engines

[xchecker]

Assuming a single CPU desktop PC, what CPU feature(s) have the biggest impact on the calculation speed/depth of chess engines? Threads, clock speed, cores, something else?

 

[K6]

depends how the engine is coded , if the engine can run multithreaded the core count can give a much higher speed boost than any other option.

Also be sure that you have enough ram to store the full move three without swapping

 

[formulav8]

Assuming a single CPU desktop PC, what CPU feature(s) have the biggest impact on the calculation speed/depth of chess engines? Threads, clock speed, cores, something else?

I've used Fritz Test Bench 4.2 for awhile now doing benching, stress testing and by far its clockspeed and cores that have the biggest impact. You can download Fritz Chess 4.2 and try it out for yourself. I do know memory controller latency and such does hardly anything to help.

 

[xchecker]

So multi processor versions, such as Deep Fritz, Deep Rybka etc. really are suited for multi core processors?

 

[PreferLinux]

Yes. They are essentially the same thing from a software viewpoint. If the software is designed for multi-processor machines, it means it is simply multi-threaded. If it is multi-threaded, it will work well on multi-core machines.